The (mostly) good news about Trump for Canadian conservatives

We heard a lot about Donald Trump’s bombast but little about where he promises to take the U.S. and less about what that would mean for Canada. Now that a Trump presidency is thinkable — according to some polls, he’s leading — here’s the (mostly) bad news for left-leaning Canadians and the (mostly) good news for Canadian conservatives.

Trump is an unabashed climate skeptic, calling global warming a hoax, vowing to rip up the Paris climate agreement and, like other Republicans, to defund the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change along with domestic global warming programs.

Once the subsidy-dependent web of NGOs, climate scientists and industries such as renewable energy and electric vehicles are shorn of the billions in tax dollars that sustain them, most will either go into a different line of business or go bankrupt. The rump that remains — chiefly NGOs funded by the few foundations that stay in the game — will have no influence in a Trump administration.

Trump’s position on climate change is consistent with his position on energy — to “Unleash America’s US$50 trillion in untapped shale, oil, and natural gas reserves, plus hundreds of years in clean coal reserves.”

Aiding this push is the abolition of the Environmental Protection Agency, whose endless red tape and prohibitions hamper resource developments, especially those involving fossil fuels. In this new, fossil-fuel-friendly environment, Canada’s oilsands will no longer be singled out for demonization, and will not be discriminated against. Trump’s energy platform includes building the Keystone XL pipeline and importing all forms of energy from Canada.

Trump’s free-market energy policies will accelerate a trend that America’s shale revolution has already begun: a shift of energy-intensive manufacturing industries from the high-cost EU to the U.S.

The manufacturing heartland that represents the base of Trump’s blue-collar support — Middle America’s smokestack industries, devastated since NAFTA was signed — will also be revived by Trump’s tax policies. He wants to cut corporate taxes from 35 per cent to 15 per cent and repatriate trillions in U.S. profits held offshore by offering those corporations a low, one-time tax of 10 per cent. Blue-collar workers will benefit, too, from another Trump policy — building a wall to keep out the illegal immigrants who depress their wages.

This revival of America’s smokestack industries will reduce pressure on the U.S. to dramatically renegotiate NAFTA, not that a renegotiation would necessarily hurt Canada. Trump’s beef with NAFTA targets Mexico, with its low wages that convinced many American manufacturers to move south.

Canada rarely appears on Trump’s radar, but if in future we do, the demands he might make — such as access to our agricultural markets by scrapping our marketing boards — would benefit Canadian consumers and remove one of Canada’s great remaining impediments to a freer market economy.

The uncertainty of NAFTA aside, Canadian exporters across the board are likely to be big winners from a Trump presidency. Trump aims for four-per-cent per annum growth in GDP, a doubling of an economy that, during the Obama years, was stuck in low growth and strangled by regulation. Apart from the extra energy the U.S. will need from Canada to fuel this boom (low oil prices alone already drove gasoline use to an all-time high in the U.S. this summer) higher U.S. wages will tend to make Canada’s labour-intensive industries more competitive.

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Amber

If people want more of what is happening in the USA then Hillary will deliver it plus a carbon tax that will hit the middle class and poor . The national debt solution
of her husband is to knock off some zero’s .
Trump is far from perfect but he will not be used by greenie want to be bag men .

Aido

It gets even more dodgy. The ‘anomalies’ are differences from a 30-year average, referred to as the ‘norm’.. 1930-1960, then 1960-1990, which is the current ‘norm’. If you took 1940-1970, or 1950-1980 as the ‘norm’, you’d get different figures. How anyone falls for this beats me.

Amber

Ricky C
About 60 million voters would likely agree with you . Some people like to rescue pit bulls to because they figure they can “fix ‘ them .
Donald Trump doesn’t need one of his top enemies buttering up his daughter
to help sell a scary global warming scam .
Gore , Podesta , and Steyer are the best of pals and would love nothing more than to have a direct pipeline into Trump to help bring him down . Stating the obvious ,
they mean him absolutely no good and will do every thing they can to wreck his Presidency one way or the other .
Lets hope Ivanka dedicates her influence and smarts to help real people and solve real problems .
Stein got 1 % of the vote for a reason . The global warming con game is over .

amirlach

Ricky C

She better not. Just like its said, everyone worked very hard, myself particularly to get the waste out of the “Climate Change” feeding trough for consultants who do nothing for the economy. If I want to make sure my medical supplies at a local hospital in third world countries that I visit are modern and effective, their economy has to be booming, not cut down by giving money to international Climate Change hustlers.

JayPee

Dale

I don’t know whether or not Tim Ball actually made the above posting but if so, it’s in very poor taste and severely weakens his potential as a climate authority. Spamming web sites (I’ve seen this several times before on other sites) is not the way to gather interest or respect. People usually ignore such spam and laugh it off as just another fly-by-night.
I’ve read many of Tim Ball’s articles and have heard him speak via video. He has too much to offer to stoop to this low level nonsense, if this posting is indeed from Tim Ball.